Review – Quality Street, Northern Broadsides, Royal and Derngate, Northampton, 4th April 2023

Posted on April 5, 2023 by therealchrisparkle

It’s a welcome return to the Royal and Derngate to director Laurie Sansom, who provided us with some memorable productions when he was Artistic Director a few years back. His innovative Private Fears in Public Places as part of the Ayckbourn at 70 season, with the audience seated on the stage; his exciting Young America season with rarely performed plays by the young Tennessee Williams and Eugene O’Neill; his breathtaking Duchess of Malfi, his beautifully understated Eden End, his intense Blood Wedding, the gripping Bacchae his superbly lucid Hedda Gabler, and his Royal and Derngate swansong, One for the Road. He returned with the triumphant James Plays in 2016, and I was also lucky enough to see his Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Menier in 2018. I am, unashamedly, a fan.

We also saw his lighter side in the hilarious Alice in Wonderland, and it’s that ability to create a light-hearted ensemble that once again comes to the fore in this current touring production of Northern Broadsides’ (of whom he is the Artistic Director) Quality Street, yet another of these shows that was suspended a few years back because of the dreaded Covid. Co-produced by the New Vic Theatre, Newcastle Under Lyme, and written by J M Barrie in 1901, it’s set roughly a hundred years earlier at the start of the Napoleonic era. In what you could describe as an early rom-com, a young woman, Phoebe, believes she may have won the heart of a dashing soldier, Valentine Brown. But when she realises she is mistaken – and out of money – she sets up a school with her older sister Susan, that drags both of them down with tiredness and the resulting lack of gaiety – no balls to attend. Ten years later Brown returns from the wars, and in attempt to show him that she still has that certain something, Phoebe pretends to be a fictitious younger niece, Livvy, to win his attention. But it doesn’t go entirely to plan…

As a Laurie Sansom show, though, it has to have something of a twist. It was the original success of the play that provided the name for the famous brand of chocolates that we still all love to gorge on today. Quality Streets are manufactured in Halifax, which also happens to be the home base of Northern Broadsides. So they invited five workers from the factory to attend rehearsals, get their feedback on the play and the production, and also to get their recollections of decades of faithful service to Mackintosh’s Chocolates. So insightful and entertaining were their comments that they decided to incorporate them into the production itself. Thus, not only does this production of Quality Street feature Phoebe, Susan, Brown and the rest of Barrie’s characters, but also Mac’s Lasses Jo, Sandra, Brenda, Barbara and Lotte from Halifax! Of course, they’re not the real people, but played by doubling up members of the cast.

The jury’s out as to the extent that this device is successful. On the one hand, their contributions are indeed frequently very funny and revealing, and they’re clearly lovely people. They serve the production as part Greek Chorus part Gogglebox, also appearing as the stagehands changing the set between the Acts, and they provide the bookends for the show, both as an introduction and a post-play wind down. And they help to juxtapose the three eras – the early 1800s when it was set, 1901 when it was written, and today – and put the content of the play into some form of modern context.

No doubt that they add a je ne sais quoi to what is otherwise a charming but relatively insignificant play. However, on the other hand, it does feel to me rather artificial and contrived. After all, the only association between these people and the play are the two words Quality and Street; it’s not even as though the chocolates were the inspiration for the play. You might just as well ask the staff at Interflora for their opinion of a box of Cadbury’s Roses. The more cynical might say they are used as padding; I couldn’t possibly comment.

Much is made in the piece of the attractiveness of the blue and white room which the Misses Throssel inhabit, but Jessica Worrall’s set keeps this to the minimum, concentrating more on blank space and gates, perhaps suggesting a kind of imprisonment, away from the glamour of the ball or the clamour of a war. However, I delighted in the appreciation that the ball dresses, in all their colourful satin glory, reflected the different colours of the wrappings in a Quality Street box – nice touch. The play itself builds slowly but sensibly, eventually descending (or do I mean ascending?) into farce but of the most genteel kind – nothing Brian Rix-like nor even Feydeau here. Barrie was writing at the end of the Victorian era and it’s curious to see a farce that never remotely touches on the subject of sex. The biggest laugh of the evening comes from the “removal” of Miss Livvy from the stage; a classic piece of comic business superbly delivered in all its – literally – fantastic glory.

The performances are all first-rate. Paula Lane takes the central role of Phoebe/Livvy and throws herself into it wholeheartedly; she has a striking stage presence and uses her strong clear voice to terrific advantage. Louisa-May Parker is excellent as the spinsterish Susan, always putting herself second but also brooking no nonsense. Aron Julius makes a superb Valentine Brown, bestriding the stage heroically, fully wrapped up in himself with an underplayed arrogance that gradually falls away with his own self-understanding.

Gilly Tompkins steals many a scene as the domineering maid Patty, and also the endearingly gossipy Barbara; and I really enjoyed the performance of Alicia McKenzie as nosy neighbour Mary Willoughby, with her upright puritanical behaviour. Alice Imelda is amusingly bossy as Charlotte, and there’s excellent support from Jelani D’Aguilar as the equally nosy Fanny, Alex Moran as the feeble Ensign Blades and Jamie Smelt as the ghastly wannabe suitor to Miss Livvy.

It’s gently entertaining and wry rather than slap-your-thighs hilarious, but it’s a rare opportunity to see an out of fashion play that was once the talk of the town. Bringing in the Mac’s Lasses is a fascinating experiment, and there’s plenty to enjoy, especially after the interval. After it leaves Northampton the tour continues to Richmond, Bolton, Leeds, York, Sheffield, Hull, Scarborough, Guildford, Keswick, Blackpool and Halifax.

Production photos by Andrew Billington

Four They’re Jolly Good Fellows!

Review – She Stoops To Conquer, Northern Broadsides, Oxford Playhouse, 23rd September 2014

Posted on September 25, 2014 by therealchrisparkle

I’d heard good things about Northern Broadsides, and it’s been decades since I’ve seen a production of She Stoops to Conquer, so I thought we’d give this one a go. This perennial favourite by Oliver Goldsmith was first performed in 1773, so how do you describe it? It’s too late for Restoration Comedy, so maybe it’s more a Comedy of Manners, and has always enjoyed regular stage revivals and ben studied by diligent English and Drama students for donkeys’ years.

Given it’s been around for almost 250 years, I hope I won’t spoil it for you by outlining the plot. Mr Hardcastle wants his daughter Kate to marry wealthy young gent Charles Marlow, and she’s not at all averse to the idea, but the trouble is Marlow has a psychological hang-up and goes all nervous and timid in front of well to do young ladies (like what Kate is); although with common lasses he’s quite the opposite. At the same time Mrs Hardcastle wants her son Tony Lumpkin (from a previous marriage) to marry her niece Constance, simply so that the family jewels can be kept within… well, the family; sounds a bit incestuous to me. However, Tony and Constance hate each other. Tony would prefer snapping at the heels of an alehouse wench and Constance has her eye on Marlow’s friend Hastings. After much shenanigans involving Marlow and Hastings believing Hardcastle to be an innkeeper and a plot to steal Constance’s jewels from Mrs Hardcastle, both Kate and Constance pair off with their respective chaps leaving Tony free to continue with his dissolute lifestyle much to his mother’s annoyance.

It’s an entertaining play that makes some interesting observations on class structure and is still just as relevant today as it was back in the late 18th century; and this production is enjoyably acted and straightforwardly presented, without any gimmicks to get in the way of the text. However, there were a couple of aspects of it that didn’t quite sit properly with me.

First – the staging. It’s nearly all set inside the Hardcastles’ country seat apart from a scene at the Three Pigeons alehouse and a scene in the Hardcastles’ garden. As a result, chairs and tables from the country house compete with illustrations of trees and bushes on the back wall and the pub sign and counter throughout the whole performance, creating a very messy stage. These suggestions of different locations don’t dovetail nicely and complement each other, they get in the way of each other. Whilst there’s still plenty of acting space available, I found the set jarring and it irritated me.

Secondly – the interpretation of the character of Tony Lumpkin. Nothing against Jon Trenchard, who gives us a very lively, physical performance full of stamina and enthusiasm, but it’s just not how the character is usually played, or how I would imagine him to be. To be fair, Goldsmith doesn’t actually stipulate in the text what kind of mannerisms Lumpkin possesses, although Hardcastle describes him as “fat”; but his name suggests a cross between a useless lump and a country bumpkin, lacking in the niceties of refined behaviour that might otherwise have attracted him to Constance. However, this Tony Lumpkin is foppish. He preens and he poses, he giggles girlishly, he dances around the stage. It’s a very, very different reading of the role from the norm, where you would almost expect Lumpkin to be chewing an ear of wheat – and as everything else in this production is pretty standard and safe, it just feels misplaced.

Nevertheless there are some very entertaining performances. Howard Chadwick’s Hardcastle is full of robust bluster, nicely sarcastic with his wife, but with genuine love for his daughter and slow to ire when Marlow and Hastings treat him like dirt. Oliver Gomm, a brilliant Lysander in the Royal and Derngate’s Midsummer Night’s Dream last year, gives a very good comic performance as the either too terrified or too vagabondish young Marlow, shuddering like a genuine nervous wreck as he tries to speak to Kate. Gilly Tompkins is a delightfully strident and painted Mrs Hardcastle, and there’s a splendidly understated comic performance by Alan McMahon as, inter alia, Pimple the Maid. But for me the two stand out performances were from Hannah Edwards as Kate and Lauryn Redding as Constance. Hilarious before they even open their mouths with their ridiculous coiffures and massively tall hats, they both take their roles seriously and play them straight without ever going over-the-top, giving a slightly hard-edged reality to the story, and allowing the humour to flow naturally.

It’s a good production – and particular congratulations to the wardrobe department for the brilliant costumes – but, overall, it never really wowed me. I quite liked the fact that they hadn’t tried to tamper with it by setting it in a different era or location, but nevertheless I never really warmed to it. Perhaps I just wasn’t in the mood for an 18th century comedy of manners. One isn’t always; but plenty of other people laughed their heads off. The tour goes on until December and visits Harrogate, Cheltenham, Winchester, Scarborough, West Yorkshire Playhouse, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Liverpool, York, Huddersfield and Salford.